Where's Your HALO?
by mnemosyne23
Summary: A dead man walks again, and he brings Dylan new evidence from an old case. Rated for language, and may become R in later chapters. Dylan/Thin Man. CHAPTER 4 ADDED 8/3/03
1. Old Faces

**TITLE:** Where's Your H.A.L.O.?  
**AUTHOR:** Mnemosyne  


**DISCLAIMER:** Any familiar characters or situations used in this story are the property of Columbia/Tristar Pictures, Sony, Flower Films, et al. Any new characters or situations are mine. No money is being made from this story.  
**SUMMARY:** The dead walk again, and he comes to Dylan bearing new evidence from an old case. SPOILERS for "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle."   
**RATING:** PG-13, with possible R in later chapters   
**CATEGORY:** Action, mystery, and a little romance (Dylan/Thin Man) :-D  
**NOTES:**  
This story derives from my discontent with the end of the second film. Darn it… The Thin Man rocks! There's no way I'm going to sit by and watch as my beloved Crispin Glover plummets to his death with a sword sticking out of his chest. Uh uh, nooooo way. What little screen time he and Drew Barrymore shared was electric, and I'm determined to see that explored. If TM could survive an exploding castle in the first film, he can survive a lethal sword wound and a deadly fall in the second, and that's that. *firm nod* No ifs, ands or buts about it. I'm also intrigued by "Anthony's" shadowy past, and just WHAT he might have been trying to say to Dylan prior to that horrific fall. In light of all the above, this story was born. Mind you, this is my first "CA" fic, so please go easy on me. :-D I hope you enjoy! 

  


* * *

  
_'Cause you're working,   
Building a mystery,  
Holding on, and holding it in.  
Yeah, you're working,   
Building a mystery,  
And choosing so carefully… _

-Sarah McLachlan  
"Building a Mystery" 

  
  
Dylan Sanders knew something was wrong the instant she stepped through her front door and hit the light switch. 

Nothing happened. 

Most people would assume this meant a bulb had blown, or perhaps a fuse had fried itself. They certainly wouldn't drop into a fighting stance, hands poised in a Tai Chi defensive position, alert green eyes scanning for any sign of conspicuous movement in the dark recesses of the apartment. But then, most people weren't one of Charlie's Angels, and even fewer were Dylan Sanders, formerly Helen Zaas, H.A.L.O. protected member of the Witness Protection Program. 

Hyper-active senses on the alert now, Dylan noticed a few key things out of place in her apartment. For one, the sliding door at the far end of the living room, which led out to her 10th story balcony, was open, allowing a cool evening sea breeze to blow in off the California coast and rustle her gauzy curtains. Secondly, the Spongebob Squarepants nightlight she kept on in her bathroom 24/7 was turned off - probably unplugged all together. 

Thirdly - and strangest of all - the entire apartment was utterly, completely, spotlessly CLEAN. 

It was as if some Guardian Angel of Cleanliness had swooped down from heaven, fluttered his/her/its wings and set every off kilter and untidy thing in her apartment to rights. The AC/DC poster behind her sound system had been straightened after months of being hung at an off-center angle. The stack of pizza boxes that had been growing beneath her wall-mounted plasma TV were gone, revealing a potted plant she'd forgotten she owned. The clothes that normally covered every available piece of furniture were missing, and the entire room had been given a thorough dusting and - judging by the raised pile of the carpet - a good vacuuming, too. 

"I've been burgled by Mary Poppins," Dylan muttered under her breath as her gaze took all this in. Then she smelled it: cigarette smoke. 

Fresh cigarette smoke. 

"Mary's smoking expensive tobacco," she murmured, then tossed herself forward in a tucked somersault as a hand snuck out of the blackness behind her and grabbed for her hair. Only taking a moment to recover, she sprang back to her feet, spun around with a wheeling kick and lashed out at the attacker. Her foot caught nothing but air before colliding with the open door and slamming it shut with a resounding BANG! "OUT of the shadows!" she demanded, assuming a defensive stance as her eyes tried to adjust to the complete darkness of the coat nook behind her door. "Out NOW!" 

There was no movement that she could discern; just a slow, shuddering breath and the red flare of a cigarette, illuminating a pair of pale, milky blue eyes in deeply shadowed sockets. Just as quickly as it had come, the light faded into shadow again; but the breathing continued. 

Dylan's head was spinning. There had been something about those eyes; something familiar that made her spine tingle. She recognized the sickly sweet smell of that tobacco; knew that it tasted much like it smelled. She knew that if she could reach out towards the figure in her coat nook, perhaps touch his hand, it would be a thin, nearly emaciated hand, attached to an equally wiry arm, attached to a body that was covered in lean muscle and not an ounce of fat. He would be dressed in a neo-'30s era pinstripe suit, with hair arranged around an immaculate part down the center, revealing a pale, smooth forehead above those haunting, pinprick eyes. 

"No...," Dylan whispered, squinting into the darkness as though she could somehow see more of him. The moonlight filtering through her open balcony door was enough to give her the vaguest outline of his tall, slender form. Another drag on the cigarette gave her one more look at his unwavering raptor eyes. "No, I saw you die. I saw you FALL. You can't... You couldn't still be alive." She let her hands drop and backed slowly away from the door, shaking her head. "It's not YOU." 

He stepped out of the shadows, and now that the moonlight didn't have to sneak around corners, it fell full on his lean, narrow face. Bringing the slender cigarette to his lips again, he inhaled deeply, then pinched his fingers around it in trademark fashion and took it from his mouth, before exhaling a long breath of smoke into her face. Dylan coughed, waving her hand to dispel the smoke. It was all he needed. He grabbed her flailing wrist, pulled her hand towards him. 

"Let me go!" she demanded, ashamed of the note of panic in her voice. Despite his superior height, she was certain she weighed more than he did. She could take him down if she had to. //Keep telling yourself that,// she reminded herself humorlessly. //You don't have a chain handy this time.// 

The Thin Man ignored her anyway. Placing the cigarette in his mouth once again, he took a deep drag as his fingers delved into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. Dylan winced, wondering what he was reaching for. He dropped something soft into her palm, then pinched the cigarette out of his mouth, exhaling the smoke again, but to the side this time. 

Dylan wrapped her hand around whatever the Thin Man had given her and stumbled backward a few extra steps, bumping into the back of her sofa as she did. Never taking her eyes from the tall assassin, she snapped, "What's this, a dead mouse? A rabbit's foot? Huh?" Keeping one eye on him - though he didn't seem to be moving - Dylan slowly unfurled her fingers to see what was nestled in her palm. 

It was a lock of hair. More than that, it was a lock of HER hair. She recognized the trademark auburn even in the milky moonlight pouring over her shoulder. He'd tied it with a black velvet ribbon, the ends of which dangled over the sides of her hand. 

Her eyes snapped up. "Where did you...?" she began to demand, then let her voice trail off. She knew exactly where he'd gotten it. "You've kept this... all this time?" she murmured, softer this time. 

Nothing. Not so much as a nod. He just kept staring at her. 

Her free hand went unconsciously to her head, massaging her scalp as she stared back at him. "That was four months ago," she murmured. "You've been dead for FOUR MONTHS. What... How did you survive? Where have you BEEN?" 

He didn't answer her. Instead, he walked past her into the living room. She saw he had a slight limp - very faint. It would have been hardly noticeable if she weren't so familiar with his normally fluid gate. He stopped, reached into his pocket for something, and dropped it with a CLINK! on her glass-topped coffee table. 

Watching him warily - she wasn't used to dead men rising from the grave - she circled the sofa and went to the coffee table, careful to keep it between herself and the assassin. Kneeling slowly, her eyes trained on his face, she reached out to pick up what he'd dropped. 

It was a ring. A perfectly round, smooth ring; too broad to be particularly fashionable, especially on one of her slender fingers, but passable for a man. It was incredibly light, and the interior was ridged in geometric patterns, but she didn't need to examine them to know what they were. 

Her eyes flicked up again, wide with shock. "How did you get this?" she asked breathlessly, holding up the ring. "This is supposed to be at the Department of Justice! This is a H.A.L.O. ring!" She stood up, squeezing the ring in her fist. "You died because of this!" 

He nodded, and a moment passed. 

Then Dylan's eyes widened even further. "Oh God," she breathed, staring at him. "Where's the other one?" 

***********************

"Why the hell did you cut the phone lines!" 

After her initial shock faded, Dylan took control of the situation quickly enough. Yes, the Thin Man should have been dead and buried, but here he was, and she'd just have to deal with him. The problem of the H.A.L.O. ring was far more troubling; she had assumed that case was long gone and over with. But then, she'd assumed the Thin Man had been killed in the fall from the roof of the Los Angeles Theater. Assumptions were dangerous things. 

Right now, she was staring at the frayed end of the wire that led from her wall to the phone in the kitchen. It felt good to fume, especially when she had someone to fume AT. "You knock out my power, kill my phone lines... What next? Boil my bunny?" 

The Thin Man looked around, as if expecting to find a rabbit near at hand, and Dylan growled in frustration. "I'm not being literal!" she barked in exasperation. "What did you think you were doing? This is MY apartment, not yours. You had no right to do ANY of this." She paused, and shrugged. "Okay, the cleaning thing is a bonus. Thanks for that. But still!" She ran a hand through her hair. Her head was starting to pound. "Well, you're an assassin. I suppose I have to chalk it up to old habits dying hard, huh? Fine. Whatever. Don't do it again. Where the hell's my cell?" 

She began rifling through the pockets of her light jacket in search of her cell phone. She'd had it earlier that afternoon, at the beach with Nat and Alex. "Dammit," she muttered as she turned out both outside pockets and the inside ones as well. "You've got to be kidding me. I did NOT lose it." But it certainly looked like she HAD lost it. All her search turned up was an old gum wrapper, half a lottery ticket and a rumpled five dollar bill. "GodDAMMIT!" 

A beep from the Thin Man's vicinity made her head snap up. In one skeletal hand he held her cell phone, it's four-color digital screen glowing. This was what had made the beep. His other hand held a note. 

"Give me that," she snapped, reaching for the phone. He shook his head, and offered her the note again. "I'll read the frigging note in a minute. Right now I want my cell phone. If you don't want to die again, you'll give it to me. Got it?" 

His eyes hardened, and quite deliberately he dropped the phone to the floor and stepped on it, grinding it under the heel of his polished wingtip. 

"HEY! Bastard!" Flinging all care to the wind, she hurtled towards him, colliding with his chest and pushing him backward to slam into the wall. "That was private property!" 

The Thin Man wheezed and went limp against the wall. Dylan backed off instantly, anger forgotten in a rush of concern. "Are you-" she began, but stopped as he slid down the wall, breathing heavily, clutching his chest over his heart. His eyes were squeezed shut, thin lips pressed together in an almost invisible line. 

"Oh... shit," she stammered, dropping to her knees next to him. "Sorry," she apologized with a wince. "I... forgot. About the sword." His eyes opened slowly, fixing her with a gaze that cut like a knife. "I'm sorry! I just apologized, didn't I?" Guilt gnawed at her. "Come on." She grabbed his elbow, trying to pull him to his feet. He didn't budge. "I said come ON." She tugged again. "Let me look." 

He stared at her distrustfully. 

"If I wanted to hurt you, all I'd have to do is punch you, right?" she asked. He didn't answer. "Right. Well, I'm not hitting you. Guess that means I don't want to hurt you. It's this thing people do, called being NICE. You should take lessons. It'd do wonders for your social life." She heaved on his elbow again, and managed to drag him up the wall into a standing position. "And while you're at it, get a tan," she suggested as she pulled him towards the couch. He was leaning heavily on her, but she accepted the weight. "You look like a vampire or an accountant or something." 

She got him settled on the couch, sat next to him, and began loosening his tie. Immediately, his hand grabbed her wrist, pulling it away from his throat. "Hey, relax, all right?" she said softly, trying to soothe him a bit. She was starting to feel guilty for having been so snide with him. "I just want to make sure I haven't reopened anything life threatening." She paused, then added. "You want to do it instead?" 

The Thin Man stared at her for a moment, then slowly began loosening his tie. Dylan nodded and sat back, letting him unbutton his jacket and the shirt beneath. He didn't go all the way - just far enough so she could pull the fabric back to reveal the left half of his chest. Like the rest of his flesh, his torso was pale as a ghost. The only thing marring the smooth white skin was a jagged red scar of raised flesh about five inches long that was set just to the right of his heart. A few inches the other way, and he would have been dead even BEFORE he fell over the side of the building, his heart skewered on the brutally sharp tip of his own sword. 

Dylan hissed in sympathy as she looked at the scar. It had obviously been stitched up by a hasty hand; she could see the crosshatching where skin had grown over some of the sutures, giving the scar a Frankensteinian appearance. "Oh God...," she murmured, reaching up to run her fingers down the thick red line. The Thin Man stiffened under her touch. "Didn't you go to a doctor?" she asked, looking into his face with real concern. He didn't answer, but she wasn't expecting one. "It was bad enough you'd been run through. What if this had gotten infected? I'm amazed you're still alive." She shook her head. "I'm amazed anyway, but even more so now." 

He felt like a panther ready to bolt under her fingers, so she pulled her hands back and carefully covered him with his shirt again. Immediately, he began refastening the buttons. "You'll live," she confirmed as she watched him. "Though the way that was stitched up, it's no wonder it still hurts. It must have taken forever to heal. I bet you kept ripping it open by accident, before the stitches could actually DO anything. Am I right?" 

Stony silence. 

"You know, if you want my help, you're going to have to start communicating somehow." She sighed and slid off the couch, kneeling beside the ruined remnants of her phone. "I loved that phone," she mourned, picking up the ruined display screen and turning it over in her hands before tossing it back on the pile and looking over her shoulder at the Thin Man. "Do you mind letting me in on the big secret here? First off, why aren't you dead? Second, why are you HERE? And third, WHERE did you get that ring? And don't think I won't drag your ass to jail if you stole it, because I will." 

She watched him finish knotting his tie. He moved with amazing economy - no extraneous motion was wasted on fussing with the knot. Every move he made was like a wolf, stalking its prey. Even mundane tasks, like buttoning a shirt, were subject to the same intensity. There was no denying, he was an excellent predator. 

A white piece of paper fluttering past her eyes pulled her out of her study of the Thin Man's lean hands. He had tossed his note at her face, and it settled in her lap. "You could just HAND it to me," she berated him, plucking the fold of paper out of her lap and uncrumpling it. 

_No phones_

Dylan looked at him with disbelief. "You've got to be kidding me," she said. Holding up the note in two fingers, she tilted her head to the side. "No phones? That's it? That's the extent of my _Need to Know_ clearance?" 

Moving with speed she hadn't expected, he leaned forward and snatched the slip of paper out of her hand. Producing a pen out of nowhere - it must have been up his sleeve - he bent over the coffee table and scribbled something on the back of the note, then handed it back to her. Dylan grabbed it away from him and read his reply. 

_Yes._

"You're not endearing yourself to me, you know," she grumbled, balling the note up in one hand and tossing it over her shoulder, in the direction of the wastebasket next to her sound system. She heard the wad of paper sink into the bin with an easy _swish!_ Nothing but net. "Next up you're going to tell me to pack a few things and follow you to Toledo or something." 

When all he did was blink at her, she let her jaw drop for a second before quickly recovering. "Oh… Give me a break! Look… Creepy, Thin Man, Anthony, whatever you want to be called. See this ring?" She held up the ring again. "This is serious shit, okay? I can't go gadding off to some non-extradition country when this is on the loose. I need to call Nat and Alex, and Bos and Charlie for that matter. We need to call the government! I don't know why they haven't called us already! Do you know what this ring IS?" 

A nod. 

"Then you know how important it is that it gets back into the right hands, and FAST." She shook her head again. "How did you GET it?" 

No answer. He was beginning to look impatient, glancing uneasily at the clock on her wall beside the front door. 

"What, you have a hot date or something? Look, unless someone else out there knows you didn't go from dust to dust, then I think we're safe." She paused, and squinted at him. "DOES anyone else know?" 

He was ignoring her. Springing like a cat, he jumped to his feet, moving quickly and uneasily, pacing back and forth behind her couch. 

"Calm down, okay?" Dylan said, standing slowly and reaching out a hand towards him, as though trying to tame a fractious lion. "It's safe here. You're going to be all right. I promise." 

He glared at her, and she realized with sudden clarity that he wasn't tame at all; not even close. She'd been treating him like a wounded kitten, but his eyes were cold-blooded as a snake, and just as poisonous. A shiver of fear trickled down her spine. 

"I'm going to get a drink of water," she said, edging toward the kitchen. Easier thought than done; the kitchen was behind her couch, and she had to cross his path to get there. But if she could just make it to the kitchen, she could get to the pager she kept in the junk drawer beside the stove. "Do you want something?" 

He was watching her like a hawk, body unmoving but eyes following her every move. It was unnerving; she felt naked under that icy stare. 

"Cut that out," she finally snapped, crossing her arms over her stomach and staring right back at him. "Do you think you're going to intimidate me or something? This is my apartment, buddy, not yours, and I'm not going to be bullied in my own place. Hell, I'm not going to be bullied PERIOD. What was that?" 

Something had creaked outside her door. 

Turning her head to look at the door, Dylan murmured, "Now what was th-" 

Then there was a blinding pain on the back of her skull, followed by a telescoping blackness as the floor rushed up to meet her. 

  
_TBC…._

  
**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Okay, there's the start. What do you think so far? I don't know how long this story is going to be, but I don't see an easy end in sight, do you? LOL! Reviews are always nice, and help stimulate the creative spark in all of us, so any kind words you have for the story to this point would be most appreciated. I'll try to update as soon as I can! :-D 


	2. This is Where You Are

**TITLE:** Where's Your H.A.L.O.?  
_Chapter 2: This is Where You Are_  
**AUTHOR:** Mnemosyne  


For Disclaimer and other notes, see chapter one 

  


* * *

  
Most people thought Natalie Cook was an airhead when they first met her, and Alex Munday was willing to admit she had been no different. It was only after spending a few hours in the bubbly blonde's presence that her intelligence, tenderness and strength became evident. Sadly, most people wrote Nat off as a "dumb blonde" without taking the time to get to know the beautiful woman, and that was their loss. If any of them had ever bothered to get to know her as more than a bimbo with breasts, they wouldn't have been at all surprised to see her crawling around on Dylan's living room floor, tush in the air, sniffing the carpet. 

"Lincoln Shoe Polish," she tossed over her shoulder to Alex, crawling a little farther forward. Sunlight was streaming through the sliding door that led to Dylan's balcony, making the eerily clean room seem all the more antiseptic. "Manufactured in Sunnyvale, California, using ingredients from across the globe." She sniffed again. "A faint trace of Bubble Yum Ballistic Berry." Sniff. "And sea salt." She pushed up onto her knees and looked Alex square in the eye. "Whoever it was, I bet they were spying on us at the beach yesterday." 

Alex nodded as she toyed with the shattered remains of Dylan's cell phone. "It would make sense. Verify Dylan's whereabouts, then come back here and wait for her to get home. Perfect plan for an ambush. " She paused, casting a knowing eye over the other Angel's apartment. "Whoever it was must have been a pro. Even taken by surprise, Dylan wouldn't have gone without a fight, but it doesn't look like she got more than a couple of hits off." 

"Maybe she knew him, her or it." 

Alex nodded slowly. Dylan's taste in men was… dodgy at best. Saying _she always falls for the bad guy_ was like saying _the sun is shiny_: obvious to the point of idiocy. The auburn Angel was drawn to danger like an unwitting moth to the blue light of a Bug Zapper; it was in her nature. So it was certainly a possibility that one of her recent beaus might have stolen her away. 

God help him if that were the case, because Alex and Natalie were going to skin him alive. 

Nat's cell phone rang, and Alex looked up as the beautiful blonde plucked it off her belt and brought it to her ear. "Hello? Hi, Bos… Nope, she's not here… It doesn't look like there was much of a fight. Alex and I think she might have been taken by someone she knew… She didn't' tell us she was seeing anyone, but Dylan can be kinda hush hush about things like that, you know? Like with Chad." She looked up at Alex. "Hey, Alex, do you think it was Chad?" 

The thought of the goofy seafarer kidnapping Dylan was enough to make Alex laugh. She fought the urge, due to the severity of the situation. "I don't think so. I doubt he uses shoe polish on his waders." 

Natalie nodded. "Right." She turned her attention back to the phone. "Tell Charlie we're going to keep looking for her, Bos. We'll have her home by tonight, you wait and see. All righty. By, Bos!" 

"I hate to rain on your parade, Nat, but we don't have one solid clue as to her whereabouts, or who took her," Alex said as Natalie clipped the phone back to her belt. "Where do we start?" 

Natalie stood up, dusted the knees of her form-fitting low riders, and beamed at Alex. "Backtrack," she said simply. 

"The beach," Alex supplied with a nod. 

"Right on." Nat glanced at a slip of paper in Alex's hand. "What's that?" 

"Something I found in the wastebasket," Alex answered, folding the note carefully in a napkin she'd nabbed off Dylan's table. It read _No phones_ on one side, and _Yes_ on the other. "Maybe it'll cough up some prints." She nodded to the door. "Let's go. I bet wherever Dylan is right now, she's going nuts waiting for us to find her." 

**********************

Dylan moaned as the blackness faded away and the world swam back into hazy focus. She was lying on something soft and comfortable, and her hands were free, so she decided she wasn't a prisoner. A brief glance around the room - very brief, because too much eye movement made her nauseous - revealed that she was in a sparsely furnished, minimalist bedroom. Aside from the narrow bed with it's cream-painted metal headboard, there was a tall, glossy dresser, a boxy nightstand, and a hardwood wardrobe, all crafted out of the same dark mahogany. They looked extremely out of place set against the spare white walls and hardwood floors, as though they'd been brought into the room due to necessity, rather than desire. There were no pictures, no knick-knacks, no novelties of any kind. This was a room for living in, not enjoying, and it showed. Cheerful sunlight poured through the four-paned window beside the bed, making the white walls blindingly bright, so that Dylan had to squint against the glare. 

Her head was throbbing, and a hand to the back of her skull revealed a lump the size of a small lemon where the Thin Man had struck her. That gave her a jolt - the Thin Man. For a moment she'd forgotten about him, but now it all came flooding back to her in a wave of memory. His ambush at her apartment, their one-sided conversation, the sound outside her door, and the final crushing blow to the back of her head which had apparently knocked her unconscious for the rest of the night and at least part of the subsequent day. 

"At least I still have some hair left," she managed to croak, rubbing the bump on the back of her head as she struggled into a sitting position. The room spun sickeningly for a moment and she sat still until it stopped moving. Her stomach still felt like it was mounted on a gimbal, but at least her head was clear, and she could move her eyes enough to find the door. It was painted white, like the walls, with a chipped, heavy knob. She couldn't tell if it was locked, but she didn't think she could make it to the threshold without collapsing anyway. 

As she stared at it, the doorknob turned and the door swung inwards. Dylan's muscles tightened as the Thin Man stepped into the room, carrying a breakfast tray. "Good morning, Sunshine," she grumbled as he crossed to the bed. The door swung shut behind him, closing with a heavy THUMP. "You know, clubbing women over the head went out with the caveman. Where did you learn your people skills, Alcatraz?" 

The Thin Man ignored her, setting the breakfast tray on the boxy nightstand. He had brought her a turkey sandwich on white bread, a glass of milk, and an apple. Looking at the spread, Dylan had the eerie feeling that she was back in grade school. She almost reached for her lunch money. 

The Thin Man stood back and stared down at her, obviously expecting her to eat the food. Dylan glanced from the sandwich to his face and back to the sandwich. Figuring if he was going to kill her, he would have done it already, she shrugged and reached for the tray. "Thank you," she said, looking up at him from beneath her lashes as she settled the tray over her lap. 

He gave her a terse nod, and kept staring. 

Dylan took a bite of the sandwich, trying to ignore the piercing intensity of his stare. The sandwich was fairly plain - a few slices of processed turkey, some wilted lettuce, and American cheese - but she was famished, and soon found herself wolfing it down. The milk was skim milk, but it tasted like heavy cream to her as she gulped it down in four mouthfuls. The apple was sweet and crunchy, and the slightly waxy texture of the skin was comforting. It was something so normal in a strange new world. 

She crunched on a mouthful of apple and looked around the room again. The food had helped steady her stomach and ease the spinning in her head, and now she could pay closer attention to her surroundings. She discovered her initial inspection had been correct - the room looked like a monk's cloister. "I bet you're just the life of every party, huh?" she quipped, feeling remarkably lighthearted for someone who'd been knocked unconscious and ostensibly kidnapped less than twenty-four hours earlier. "You know, a little color would really give this place personality. You oughta spring for a Warhol or two, cheer up the walls." She looked up at his expressionless face again. "This IS your home, right?" 

He tilted his head in birdlike fashion, watching her watch him. In the full light of day, his eyes were an even paler shade of blue than they were at night. Dylan squinted, trying to define the border where his iris met the white of his eye; she couldn't make it out. "None of this is normal," she said, still squinting at him. "You know that, right?" Her eyes cleared and she let her focus backtrack so that she was looking into his eyes rather than at them. "A normal person would have taken that ring to the police, or at least let me take it to the Agency. A normal person wouldn't have kidnapped me and locked me up in their room like something out of a V.C. Andrews novel." She sighed. "I don't suppose I get an explanation about any of this, huh?" 

He'd obviously been expecting this question, because with a deft motion, a note appeared in his hand, which he extended to her. Dylan took it with a curious frown. 

_No._

Dylan sighed. "Fine. Be that way." And she flung herself at him 

She had the advantage of surprise, so he stumbled backwards to collide with the wardrobe as she slammed into his upper body. The Thin Man recovered quickly and pushed her away with a mighty heave. Dylan staggered back towards the bed but managed to keep her feet, despite the wave of dizziness that chose that moment to hit her like a load of bricks. Her knees felt like water, and she knew the blood was draining from her face, leaving her pale as a ghost. //Bet I look like him now,// she thought wryly, dropping into a defensive crouch. "Get out of the way, Creepy," she warned as he positioned himself in front of the door. "You've been decent enough, in your freaky way, but if I have to go through you, I will. I owe you a bump on the head, after all." She gestured to her own lump before going back to her pose. "Now move." 

He didn't budge. 

"All right, buddy," she growled. "You asked for it. HIIIIII-YAH!" She launched herself at him with a flying somersaulting kick. 

He caught her. 

How the hell did he CATCH her? 

"Let me GO!" she yowled as he wrestled her over his shoulder and carried her back towards the bed. She began kicking her feet and pounding his back with her fists. She knew it had to hurt him, but he didn't seem to notice. "Dammit! You can't keep me here! Let me GO!" 

He flung her down on the bed as though she weighed little more than a rag doll. Adding insult to injury, Dylan felt the familiar steel bite of a pair of handcuffs snapping around first her right wrist, then threading through the metal headboard to close around her left. "Hey! Stop that! Unlock me!" she protested, struggling against her bonds. They rattled and clanked against the metal pistons of the headboard, but there was no give. She wasn't getting out of here that way. 

The Thin Man reached out with the speed of a python and covered her mouth with one hand, pressing her head back into the pillow. Dylan stilled, staring up at him with furious eyes. He only meant to quiet her, but she could feel the untapped strength in that wiry forearm; knew that he could snap her neck in a heartbeat, if he really wanted to. She would have leveled a kick at him, if she wasn't absolutely certain he could dodge it without batting an eye. 

When he seemed sure she wasn't going to start screaming at him again, the Thin Man took his hand away from her mouth. Dylan wanted to snap at his thumb with her teeth but fought the urge. "When I get out of these cuffs," she growled through gritted teeth, "and I WILL get out of these cuffs, I'm going to shackle you to a chalkboard and make you write _I shall not pinion Angels_ ten thousand times. Backward. With a squeaky piece of chalk!" 

If she didn't know any better, Dylan would have sworn he looked amused. Before she could verify her suspicions, he had taken the tri-folded handkerchief from his pocket and tied it around her mouth as a very effective gag. Dylan bucked and howled and tried to wrench her head away from his strangely delicate hands, but he ignored her struggles and gagged her anyway. When he was done, he turned away from the bed and went to the door 

"Mm mmm MMM mmmm mm!" Dylan bellowed through her gag, though what she was trying to say was _I'll get out of here!_ "Mmm mmm mmmm mm mmmm!" _You can't keep me here!_

The Thin Man left the room without looking back. She might have been a forgotten childhood tea party, for all the attention he gave her. 

Dylan stared after him in fury. "M MMM MMMMMM M MMM M MMMMM MM MMM!" she howled after the door had closed. 

_I CAN'T BELIEVE I HAD A THING FOR YOU!_

If he heard her, he didn't come back to respond. 

******************

"So we were there," Natalie said, gesturing across the jeweled sands of the beach to where she, Alex and Dylan had been tanning the day before. "What would be a good vantage point for a Peeping Tom?" 

She joined Alex in swiveling her head around, searching for the ideal hiding place for a spy. The sound of the ocean crashing in the background was soothing. Any other day she might have given Pete a call and asked if he could get out of work long enough to come down to the shore for a quick dip and an ice cream cone; but today, that wasn't an option. Their missing Angel hadn't left any feather's behind as clues for them to follow, and Natalie was worried. She had no doubt they'd find Dylan - that was never even a question. She was far more afraid that, when they found the other woman, perhaps Dylan wouldn't want to come home. 

"Hey Alex?" she asked. 

"Yeah?" The pretty Asian-American woman was staring hard at a cluster of ice cream stands about twenty feet away, as if daring a beach bum with well-polished shoes to emerge and lead them to their missing friend. 

"Do you..." Natalie trailed off, biting her lip nervously. 

Alex looked at her. "Do I what, Nat?" she asked in her usual neutral tone. Early in their friendship, Nat had assumed Alex hated her, because she so rarely used inflection in her speech. It wasn't until they'd known each other for a week that Nat discovered Alex was like that to everyone, and that if she hated you, you KNEW it. 

Still, she didn't feel right talking about Dylan behind the other woman's back. It made her feel dirty and low; like a bad friend. That was the worst thing in the world. "I was just... thinking about Dylan," she said cagily. 

"What about her?" 

"Oh... Nothing, I guess." 

Alex turned to face her head on. "You're wondering if maybe she wasn't kidnapped at all, aren't you." It wasn't a question. 

Natalie blinked. "Yeah," she said, a little awestruck. "How did you know?" 

Alex gave her a small smile. "Because I was thinking the same thing. But I don't think we have to worry. First off, Dylan would NEVER destroy her cell phone; she loved that phone. It was like a puppy to her." Natalie giggled a little at that, and Alex smiled a bit more. "Second, there WERE signs of a struggle; we can't discount those. Dylan left a hell of a dent in her door when she kicked it shut, so she was obviously striking out pretty hard, and I doubt that was an accident. And the note, of course. Then thirdly, she uses Kiwi shoe polish, not Lincoln. She swears by it." 

"That's true," Natalie agreed, nodding thoughtfully. A sudden thought struck her, and she couldn't resist a grin. "You know what we should be doing, right? We should be asking everyone up and down the beach if they saw a man standing around yesterday wearing high-polished shoes. Someone like that is bound to stick out like a sore thumb." 

Alex chuckled. "You're right. Hey!" she called out to a buxom blonde waxing her surfboard a dozen feet away. "May we ask you a question?" 

The blonde tossed her hair over her bronzed shoulder as she looked up at them with brilliant green eyes. "Yeah, all right," she replied, sounding bored to tears by the suggestion. "What do you want?" 

"Real simple question," Alex answered, moving to stand in front of the woman. "Did you see a man or woman hanging around here yesterday wearing freshly polished shoes?" 

"Sure." 

That was a bit of a surprise. They hadn't been expecting an answer so quickly. "Where?" Natalie pressed, moving in to join Alex. 

The blonde shrugged and nodded towards a swimsuit changing station halfway up the beach. "Over there. He was hanging around the changing booths like he was waiting for someone. Kinda cute; really amazing eyes. They were this crazy shade of blue." 

Alex and Natalie shared a look. "Can you describe him?" Alex asked. 

"Yeah. Tall, lanky. Really intense. You know the kind I mean? Had these serial killer eyes that were just mrowr." The blonde grinned, unconsciously fluffing her hair. "I tried to get his number but he ignored me." She sounded affronted by the fact. She obviously didn't get ignored often. 

"What was he wearing?" Natalie asked, feeling a cold sweat start to roll down her spine. 

"Well, the shoes. I thought that was weird, since this is the beach and all. Figured they'd get sandy. I don't think he was here for the water though, 'cause he was wearing this real dark suit." 

"Did he have a cane?" Natalie asked quietly. She saw Alex shoot her a look that shared her own anxiety. 

"Yeah, now that you mention it. Real nice, too. Looked expensive. Not much good on the sand, though." The blonde glanced at the water, then back to Nat and Alex. "Look, are we done here? I said I'd answer one question, not fifty. Who is this guy anyway? Your pimp or something?" 

Natalie ignored the gibe. "My brother. He's got a memory condition. He wandered off yesterday and we're trying to find him." 

"Oh. Well, whatever. We done now?" 

Alex nodded and waved her off, and she leaned in close to Natalie as the surfer girl jogged off towards the water. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she whispered. 

"But... You saw him fall," Natalie protested. "Both you and Dylan SAW him fall. He was stabbed and everything! No one could survive that. Could they?" 

Alex shrugged. "No one should be able to survive an exploding castle, but he managed that." 

"But..." She trailed off. _But_ nothing. The man the blonde had just described was already proven to have an unusual obsession with Dylan, and it would explain the note Alex found in the other Angel's wastebasket. _Serial killer eyes._ The blonde had no idea how close to the truth she had come. 

"I think it's time to pay the nuns another visit," she heard Alex say, as if from a great distance. "Maybe little Anthony is due back for a haircut." Her voice was ice cold and hard as stone. This, Natalie decided, was what Alex Munday sounded like when she hated somebody. She was extremely grateful she'd never heard that tone pointed in her direction. 

If the Thin Man knew what was good for him, he'd be feeling very, VERY afraid right now. 

**********************

The sun was starting to set by the time the Thin Man returned to Dylan's room. She never thought she'd be so thankful to see him, but spending hours alone with nothing to keep her occupied had just about driven her mad with boredom. There were only so many times she could count the boards in the floor, or try to see cloudlike patterns in the cottage cheese texture of the ceiling. Her wrists were rubbed raw from where she'd struggled in a futile effort to dislodge the cuffs. The Thin Man had obviously been careful to strip the room of any item that might be used as a lock pick. He'd even taken Dylan's belt while she was unconscious. 

He entered the room much as he had earlier in the day, carrying a breakfast tray. This time, instead of a turkey sandwich, the tray was loaded down with a plate of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and broccoli, with a glass of water. There were no utensils, and she wondered for a minute if he expected her to eat like a dog; especially the potatoes. 

He set the tray on the nightstand, then turned to her, studying her face with interest. Dylan figured he was gauging her expression, trying to decide if she was going to try to bite him if he took the gag off so she could eat. She tried to put on a scowl, but the smell of the fried chicken had reached her by then, and her stomach growled loudly. //Thanks a lot,// she thought morosely, glaring down at her belly. //Traitor.// 

Her attention was drawn up again when the Thin Man's hands snaked around behind her head to untie the gag. She spat it out as he drew back, and moved her dry tongue around in her equally dry mouth. "Thanks," she shot sarcastically, voice hoarse from lack of moisture. She swallowed a couple of times to try and moisten her throat, but it did no good. She glanced briefly at the water on the tray, then quickly looked away again. 

The Thin Man must have noticed, because a moment later, he was touching the rim of the glass to her lips. Dylan glared at him; he stared back with his usual distant expression. Deciding it would be easier to hurl insults at him if she could actually talk, Dylan grudgingly opened her mouth and allowed him to tip a measured mouthful of water into her mouth. It tasted sweet, and she gulped it down greedily. When he took the glass away, she let out an unconscious cry of protest. He ignored her. 

Recovering herself quickly, Dylan watched the Thin Man set about preparing her dinner. He rearranged the food gingerly, using only his fingertips and quickly wiping his hands on one of a small pile of napkins that flanked the dinner plate, opposite the water glass. He was extremely meticulous, making sure that none of the food was touching - the chicken was carefully moved away from the broccoli and potatoes, and the broccoli was stacked into a neat pile, like a miniature forest of felled trees. The potatoes themselves had been served using an ice cream scoop - Dylan was once again reminded of a grade school cafeteria. 

Her stomach growled again. "You want to let me out of these so I can eat?" she asked testily, rattling her cuffed wrists. "Or it might be a bit difficult." 

The Thin Man ignored her - he did that a lot, she decided angrily - and reached into his breast pocket. When he took his hand away, Dylan saw that he was holding a knife and fork. Picking up the tray and setting it over her lap, he sat down on the edge of the bed, stabbed a piece of broccoli with the fork and brought up to her mouth. 

God this was embarrassing. No one had fed Dylan Sanders since she was three years old and still went by Helen Zaas. Even her boyfriends over the years had never fallen into the sugary-sweet trap of trying to FEED her anything. Oh, she might eat out of their hands now and then, but only on rare occasions, and only when it was perfectly clear that SHE was the one in control of the situation. This was entirely different. Not only did she have no control whatsoever, she was also desperate for the food he was offering her. It was amazing how hungry a person could get after doing nothing all day. 

Finally, after a protracted stare contest that didn't leave either of them a winner, Dylan opened her mouth and let him feed her the broccoli. She chewed and swallowed hurriedly, determined not to enjoy the food. But when he offered her a forkful of mashed potatoes, she was slightly more inclined to open her mouth. 

"You know," she finally broke the silence as she watched him struggle at cutting a cube of meat off a fried chicken leg, "you're the first guy who ever managed to handcuff me to the bed on the first date. Kudos to you. I know a few guys who'd wonder what your secret is." 

He glanced up at her, then back to the chicken. 

Dylan watched for a few more seconds, then rolled her eyes. "Oh, for Pete's sake. What are you, from Pluto? It's a chicken leg. Pick it up, for God's sake." She opened her mouth and gave him a look that said she'd brook no argument. 

The Thin Man looked at her like she'd just grown a second and third head. The thought of touching a piece of cooked chicken was obviously repellant to him. But when Dylan cocked an impatient eyebrow, he unwillingly picked up three napkins and, using them as a barrier between his fingers and the chicken, picked up the leg and held it to her mouth. 

Dylan got as much of the chicken between her teeth as she could fit and ripped it off the bone, luxuriating in the taste and texture of the mouthful. "Guh bye," she garbled around the bite, meaning _Good boy_, and hoping he got the message. The Thin Man didn't seem to care one way or the other. 

"See?" she said after swallowing and licking her lips. "That wasn't so bad, right?" The Thin Man didn't look convinced. "Why are you such a clean freak?" she wondered aloud, cocking her head as she considered him. "Have you always been this way?" 

He fed her another piece of broccoli before she could ask anymore questions. 

They went on in that way for a few more minutes - piece of broccoli, mouthful of potato, bite of chicken - until the plate was empty. Dylan chewed thoughtfully on her last bit of crunchy chicken skin as she watched the Thin Man neatly fold the napkins he'd use to pick up the chicken leg and set them square in the center of the dirty plate. He wiped his hands on a fresh napkin, folded it, and added it to the trash pile. Then he picked up yet another napkin, turned to her, and held it to her lips. And waited. 

Dylan finished chewing her bit of chicken, swallowed, and stared at him. His eyes were locked on hers, and she was struck by their sudden closeness. He'd been sitting next to her for the entire feeding process, but only now was Dylan aware of how close they were. His hip was touching her leg, and she could feel how warm his skin was, even through his suit pants and her raggedy denims. Part of her wanted him to take the initiative and pat her lips with the napkin, though she knew he wouldn't do it; but childish as it sounded, she wanted it done. 

Keeping her eyes on his, she leaned forward the few necessary centimeters and touched her lips to the napkin. He held it steady as she touched her lips once, then twice against the fine quality, clothlike paper. His head tilted a fraction of a degree to the right as he watched her. Feeling like a fish in a fishbowl, Dylan leaned in again, a little farther this time, and closed her eyes, pressing her lips firmly against the napkin and pushing it against the palm of his hand through the layers of paper. She stayed that way for a few seconds before feeling his other hand come up to slide into her hair. Her body tensed slightly, readying for the sharp pain as he pulled out a clump of her hair; but it didn't come. His fingers tightened in her auburn tresses, but did no more. His thumb, meanwhile, caressed the bare skin behind her ear, making Dylan shiver with pleasure. 

Finally, she sat back, moving slowly so as not to jostle his hand from her head. She told herself it was so he wouldn't get spooked and yank out a handful of her hair; but there was no denying she was enjoying his thumb's caresses behind her ear. When her lashes at last fluttered open, Dylan saw that his eyes were focused intently on her lips, as though he'd never seen them before. 

//Maybe he's remembering...// 

Dylan shook off that train of thought. She was still cuffed to the bed, and he still didn't show any sign of letting her go. This was no time for sentimentality. "May I have some water?" she asked quietly, determined not to scare him away with any ultimatums. 

The Thin Man looked up from his study of her lips and found her eyes again. After a moment, he slid his hand from her hair - Dylan forced herself not to bite her lip as he did so - and reached for the glass of water. Bringing it to her mouth, he held it steady as she took a few deep swallows, then tilted it back and set it down on the tray again. They sat in silence after that, while Dylan tried frantically to choose a course of action that would get her out of the cuffs. 

"Is there a bathroom around here?" she finally asked, for lack of anything else to say. 

The Thin Man stood up. For a second, she was afraid he was going to leave entirely before she'd even gotten a CHANCE to woo him into taking off the cuffs. But instead of going to the door, he strode purposefully across the room to where the wardrobe stood against the wall opposite her bed. Taking hold of the edge of the wardrobe, he pulled. It swung away from the wall easily - it must have been mounted on wheels or gliding hinges - to reveal a small, white, immaculately clean bathroom hidden behind it. 

"Neat," Dylan said, honestly impressed. Then, after a pause, "Uh... May I use it? The milk and water and all..." 

He squinted at her, and she knew he was trying to decide if she was working on an escape attempt. Dylan tried her hardest to look innocent; being an Angel had taught her how to be angelic, after all. She'd never have Natalie's skill, but few people did. Nat was in a class of her own. 

The Thin Man finally gave a quick nod and crossed back to the bed. Dylan forced herself not to sigh with relief as he carefully unlocked first her left wrist, then her right. Biding her time, Dylan let him help her off the bed - MAN, it felt good to stretch her legs and back - and then let herself be guided to the hidden bathroom. The Thin Man was keeping his hands on her upper arms at all times, holding her tightly while at the same time ensuring she couldn't tense her muscles for an attack without him knowing instantly. He was a professional, no doubt about it. 

He gave her a little shove into the bathroom, and quickly swung the "door" closed behind her. Dylan tried to protest, but the door/wall was already shut, so it was a waste of effort. Turning back into the main body of the room, she looked around, trying to find any kind of escape route: an air vent, a heating duct, anything. 

Nothing presented itself. The tiny tiled bathroom might as well have been Fort Knox. Unless she wanted to pull the toilet out of the floor and crawl down through the plumbing, she wasn't getting out this way. When she emerged a few minutes later, she was no closer to an escape than she had been when she went in. 

The instant she stepped into the bedroom, she felt the cold steel of a cuff close around her right wrist, and groaned. "Can't we give the shackles a rest?" she complained as the Thin Man pulled her back towards the bed. "We're on the same side, right? I mean, if you wanted to hurt me, you would have done it already, and if you had to turn me over to somebody, you wouldn't have bothered feeding me. I'm not stupid, you know. I've been in my share of hostage situations, and this is not one of them." 

The Thin Man coolly threaded her cuffs through the headboard once again and fastened them tightly around her wrists. "Look, I can help!" she vented in frustration as he checked to make sure the cuffs would hold. "Whatever is up with the H.A.L.O. ring, I can help you." She decided to try another tack. "I've got a vested interest in those rings, you know. They're more than pretty baubles to me." When that didn't work, she decided to try yet another angle. "Or would you rather I just stay here, cuffed to the bed, and wait for the O'Grady's to find me? Because they will, you know. Once those rings are out in the open, they're going to track me down and make sure I'm good and dead. The O'Grady Clan doesn't take kindly to their favorite sons getting killed, and they're bound to find out I'm the one who did the killing." 

This line of thought appeared to have struck a nerve. The Thin Man sat back and stared into her face, looking unsure for the first time since she'd met him. 

"I'm an Angel," she pressed, leaning forward. "That means I'm more than a pretty face with good fashion sense. I can kick ass and take names with the best of them. And speaking from experience, wherever that ring is, ass-kicking and name-taking are never far behind." She tilted her head to the side, hoping her eyes were as sincere as she felt. "You got hurt because of those rings once already. Protecting me, no less. I'd really rather not have that on my conscience again. Okay?" 

He wavered for a moment. Dylan could see him weighing his options, turning them over in his head like a flapjack flipper at an IHOP. She bit her tongue, not wanting to disrupt his concentration and possibly ruin her chances. 

When he stood up and started gathering the tray, she wanted to scream with frustration. "Let me go!" she cried instead, shaking her chains. "You can't keep me here like your pet! You have to let me go!" 

He carried the tray to the door, turning his back on her. 

"All right then!" she called after him. "When I DO get out of here, I'm not sticking around! I'm heading back to the Agency, getting the girls and bringing them back here to smack you around a bit before we cart you off to jail. Get me? Then we're going to take that ring and PERSONALLY hand it to Roger Wixon, and make sure no one - not you, not the O'Grady's, not another rogue frigging Angel - can get near it ever again. Get me?" No answer. "DO YOU GET ME?" 

He stopped. He turned. He stared at her. 

Dylan stared back, letting all her fury boil to the surface. She'd never liked being caged; it was one of the few things that had almost kept her from joining the Townshend Agency. The thought of having her day dictated through a schedule set down by a faceless millionaire was not something that thrilled her. Thankfully, being an Angel had given her more freedom than she'd even had during her delinquent days. 

But sitting here, bound and virtually helpless, that same Caged Tiger mentality was bubbling over. No one bound Dylan Sanders and got away with it. No one. 

When he set down the tray and came back to the bed, reaching for his pocket, she reared away from him, expecting another gag. But instead of a handkerchief, he took a pen from his pocket, and scribbled a note on a clean napkin he'd taken from the tray. He held it up for her to read. 

_Don't leave._

She read it, then looked over the top of the napkin at him. "Unlock me and I won't," she said firmly. 

Another quick note: _Promise_. 

"Pinky swear," Dylan grumbled. When he shook the note in her face, she glared at him. "Fine, fine! I promise!" 

He stared at her for a moment, then dropped the note, fished the key from his trouser pocket and unlocked her hands. Dylan immediately began rubbing her wrists as he tucked the cuffs into his pocket with the key. "Thank you," she said honestly, curling up on the bed and looking up at him. 

He didn't look at her, but turned away and went back to the door. Picking up the tray again, he opened the door with one hand and slipped out into the hall. As Dylan worked at restoring the circulation to her hands, she heard the distinct sound of a key turning in the lock, and cast the door a sharp look. It hadn't made that sound before. 

"Fine," she muttered, cracking her knuckles and twisting her wrists, "I guess we're going to have to take this trust thing in baby steps." 

  
_TBC..._

  
**Author's Notes:** Hello again, everyone! Sorry this update was so long in coming. I just wanted to say thank you so much for all the wonderful reviews! They mean so much to me - I can't thank you enough! I'm a huge fan of all the CA fic here at ff.net (especially the Dylan/Thin Man entries ;)), so getting such great feedback from so many talented people is just a blast. Thank you again! 


	3. Revelations

**TITLE:** Where's Your H.A.L.O.?  
_Chapter 3: Revelations_  
**AUTHOR:** Mnemosyne  


For Disclaimer and other notes, see chapter one 

  


* * *

  
Another hour of scouring the beach turned up more surfers, beach bums and vendors who had seen the Thin Man the previous day. Most of them described him the same way - intense and focused, with an aura that screamed _Don't bug me or I'll kick your ass._ A few of the plumper ice cream sellers had been downright afraid of him. By the end of the afternoon, Natalie and Alex had a description of his car, the direction he'd come in from, and the direction in which he left. 

"Is it me," Alex asked as she and Natalie cruised northward along the busy Strip in the Agency's candy apple red convertible, "or is this just too easy? I mean, the Thin Man was a master of disappearing into a crowd. That's what made him such a great assassin; he could get in anywhere. Just look at the Coal Bowl - no one knew he was there till he showed himself. None of us had a clue." Natalie saw the darker woman shift into a more comfortable position in the passenger seat. "I don't get it. Why's he being so visible now?" 

"Maybe he's counting on us thinking he's dead," Natalie posited, slowing to let a troupe of giggling teenage girls cross the street in front of them. "Maybe he figures that we won't suspect him, since we saw him die." She furrowed her brow. "Or, thought we saw him die. It's kind of confusing, trying to describe it, don't you think? What verb tense should we use?" 

"I don't think so," Alex argued, skipping over Natalie's question. "The Thin Man's a mute, but he's not stupid. He's got to know he sticks out like a sore thumb. And he already came back from the dead once. Admittedly, it's hard to think of anyone pulling that trick twice, but why not? He's just freaky enough to make it feasible." She shook her head. "This just feels too easy. I don't like it." 

Natalie nodded in agreement and chewed her bottom lip. There was something hinky at work here. Dylan disappearing, followed by the miraculous reappearance of the Thin Man, who just HAPPENED to leave behind a boatload of clues for them to follow... Hinky didn't even begin to describe it. 

"Uber-hinky," she acknowledged with another nod. Yes, that fit. It sounded good, too. Like a German soap opera. "This whole thing is uber-hinky." 

Alex nodded but didn't say anything, sunk deep in thought. Natalie brought the car to a gentle stop at the next red light, and let her eyes wander over the traffic and pedestrians who lined the thoroughfare. The Angels were getting away from the tourist centers and heading into the commercial and business sector of the seafront. To the right was a massive shipyard, with three or four tankers and freighters docked where she could see them. She started to whistle the theme from _Beverly Hills Cop_ and drummed her thumbs on the steering wheel as she waited for the light to turn green again. 

"Hey Nat?" 

"Yeah?" she looked at Alex, who was gazing distractedly out the passenger window. 

"What kind of car did that blue-haired surfer say the Thin Man was driving?" 

"A trophy blue MG _TF_ 120 with black, all leather interior, alloy wheels, projector headlights, removable hard top - which was removed - and an integrated lip spoiler," Natalie said, trying not to coo. Just imagining the car was enough to make her swoon - it must have been beautiful. 

"Don't you think that's a bit flashy for someone who's trying to keep themselves under wraps?" 

"Yeah," Natalie agreed. 

Alex looked at her. "Unless the one with the car WANTED to be found," she said, and jerked her thumb over her shoulder, towards the shipyard. 

Natalie frowned and peered through the passenger window, in the direction Alex indicated. There, parked amongst the dirty shipping crates and piles of heavy netting, was a sleek, shiny, trophy blue MG _TF_ 120. It sparkled like a sapphire amongst the black tar and driftwood of the shipyard. 

"Way too easy," Natalie and Alex said in unison. 

"Ambush?" Alex asked. 

"Definitely ambush," Natalie affirmed. 

"Bluff 'em?' 

"Absolutely." 

"Let's spring a trap," Alex said, as the light turned green and Natalie turned right. 

******************

They stowed the car out of sight and snuck up to the MG. There was nothing inside to indicate that Dylan had been harmed, or indeed that she'd been there at all. The car might as well have been brand new and fresh off the assembly line for all the visible information it provided. Still, Natalie opened the driver's side door, leaned over and sniffed the gas pedal. "Lincoln Shoe Polish," she confirmed, looking over her shoulder at Alex. "This is his car all right." 

Before Alex could respond, a bullet shattered the driver's side mirror. It came so close, Natalie could feel its hot breath graze over her tailbone. Both women dropped to the ground and rolled away from the car, before leaping to their feet in a kung fu stance, back to back, ready for a fight. 

None seemed forthcoming. 

"Where the hell did that come from?" Alex hissed over her shoulder to Natalie. Before Nat could answer, another bullet blew apart a shipping crate that topped a pile of identical boxes behind the two women. They threw their arms over their heads to protect their eyes from the flying splinters of wood. 

"He's using a silencer!" Natalie exclaimed. 

"That freighter!" Alex called, pointing in the direction of the nearest docked ship. Natalie looked up and saw a flash of light on the deck, against the blood red sunset sky. A second later, the tarmac immediately in front of Alex's boots exploded as a bullet tore into it. 

"That's IT!" Alex exclaimed. "I don't like people shooting at me!" She began to run for the ship, dodging left and right and hiding behind crates to avoid the sniper's frighteningly accurate aim. Natalie went with her, following a different, equally erratic course. 

Getting onto the ship was easy enough. If either of them had taken the time to notice, they would have agreed it was too easy. Instead, they went haring up the gangplank and dove onto the rusty metal deck of the ship, fully prepared to be attacked from all sides by twenty burly henchmen. 

No one appeared. And the gunman was gone. 

"The hell…?" Alex panted, never dropping her guard for a second. 

Natalie was beginning to rethink this whole _Storm the Battlements_ idea. Springing a trap was all well and good, but the Thin Man had proven to be smart as well as resilient - he could easily have anticipated their brash behavior. This whole business was beginning to seriously creep her out. It seemed to her they were far too exposed, and she was about to say so when the familiar cold steel of a gun barrel pressed against the base of her skull. 

"Hey there, cutie," a harsh voice rasped in her ear. "Not too bright, now are you?" 

Natalie stiffened instantly, and knew from the way Alex tightened beside her that she was in a similar predicament. //Not good, not good, definitely not good,// Natalie thought frantically, eyes darting around the ship's deck in search of a mode of escape. None presented itself - every stray chain, rope, and piece of freight had been removed. The deck looked almost surgically clean. Which meant two things. One, this was definitely a trap. And two, this was ONE HELL of a trap. 

"You're the ones threatening two women in broad daylight," Alex observed levelly, maintaining her trademark aloof tone. "Which one of you is wearing the _I'm with Stupid_ t-shirt?" 

Natalie giggled. 

A new voice spoke - presumably the man pressing the gun to Alex's neck; Natalie hadn't been able to look over her shoulder yet. "Actually, we're threatening you in broad twilight, not daylight, darling." A British voice. "Things like that tend to play godawful tricks with the eyes. I'm sure any passing motorist who sees our little diorama is going to blink and move along. Just like you're going to do, like a good little lamb, all right?" 

Natalie felt her captor push hard against her tailbone with a harsh palm. "Fine, fine, sheesh," she complained, moving towards the nearest open hatchway. "Didn't you graduate sixth grade? If you want to get a girl to like you, you don't throw things at her, you don't call her names, and you don't point guns at her head. It's in Dating Guidebook 101." 

"I'm not paid to make you like me." Another hard shove. "Move!" 

"I'm moving! I'm moving! Geez!" She shared a brief sideways look with Alex. There was no way they were getting out of this situation easily. They'd just have to go with it for now. 

"Aren't we supposed to say _Take us to your leader_ first?" Alex asked drily as they approached the hatchway. 

"Boss ain't here yet," Natalie's captor said gruffly. 

"Besides, that usually comes after the _We come in peace_ bit, luv," Brit Boy (as Natalie had dubbed him) quipped. "And I assure you, dearies, that we don't." 

************************

Dinner was over and done, but Dylan had a feeling the Thin Man was going to be back before the night was out. So when she heard the key turn in the lock, she was ready. 

"GOTCHA!" she crowed as he slipped into the room. Leaping from behind the door, she landed square on his back and knocked him forward to the floor. "Now I want a-AHH!" 

The Thin Man - never one to be taken by surprise - promptly flipped over beneath her, grabbed her by the shoulders, and rolled them so that he was hovering over her and she was the one pinned to the floor. 

Dylan squinted at him. "Cute," she snapped sarcastically. "But you forgot one thing." 

He cocked his head. 

"This." She swiftly brought her knee up between his legs and clipped him square in the crotch. 

The effect was instantaneous and oddly gratifying. The Thin Man fell to the side with a garbled cry, curling into a ball, face screwed into a grimace of pain. Dylan rolled into a sitting position and crouched beside him, jaw set and eyes firm. "Now that we've proven you're not a eunuch," she said, ignoring his heated glare, "let's get down to the business at hand." She grabbed one of his hands and pulled it away from his protective curl. There, nestled on his index finger, was the familiar titanium ring. "Or rather, the business on YOUR hand." She slid the ring off, and tossed his hand away. Toying with the band, she looked down at him. "Didn't anyone ever teach you not to play with other people's toys?" 

He glared up at her, breathing heavily, and slowly struggled into a sitting position. He started to reach for the ring, but she held it away from him. "Uh-uh," she chided, waggling a finger in front of his face. "I want answers first." 

Stony silence. The ice blue of his eyes was colder than ever. 

"Look, you can keep playing games with me if you want, but if you do, I'm going to get up and walk right out that door, and take this with me." She waved the ring in front of his face. At his stricken look, she shook her head, "No, I don't care. Promise or not, I'm taking off, understand? And don't think you can stop me, either. You think that first knee was bad, I have another one just like it." His eyes thinned at her, but she kept on talking. "I don't know why you brought me here, and if you're not going to tell me, then I'm not going to stick around to find out. I'm not some kind of bird you can keep in a cage and only let out when you want to. I'm an Angel - we have bigger wings." 

She watched his eyes dart back and forth between the ring, the door, and her eyes. Dylan kept her gaze level, and never looked away from his face. 

"I could have left already," she said after a few moments had passed, bringing his attention back to her fully. Leaning forward, she murmured, "I didn't." She held the ring up for him to see. "I could take this with me." She set it on the floor between them, and sat back. "I won't." 

He started to reach for the ring, but Dylan placed her foot over the titanium band before his hand could complete the journey. 

"On one condition," she said when he looked up at her. "You tell me everything." She raised one eyebrow. "No secrets. Okay?" 

The conflict in his eyes was palpable. It was obvious he wanted to get his hands on that ring - and guarantee that she wasn't going to spirit herself away in the bargain - but he was still afraid to tell her. She had to sway him in her favor somehow. 

Reaching out, she grabbed his wrist. The Thin Man stiffened and tried to pull away, but she tightened her grip and wouldn't let go. "I'm taking a chance here," she said, pulling his hand towards her. "I'm trusting you. I'm guessing that's something you don't get a lot, what with the creepiness and the killing people and all. Even criminals don't trust assassins. You think I don't know that? I was a criminal too, you know. I get it." 

Slowly, she pulled his hand upward. As if he knew what she was doing, his hand stretched out, grasping at the air. Moving carefully, Dylan slid his fingers into her hair. Or rather, she started the action - he finished it, burying his hand to the wrist in her rich auburn tresses. His insanely thin fingers cradled the base of her skull, then stilled. 

He was shaking. She could feel the tremors moving up his arm. 

"I trust you," she murmured, watching his eyes, which were watching her hair. "Now I need you to return the favor, all right? You've gotta trust me back. Hey." She reached out and tilted his chin so that he was looking at her; with distant eyes and a dazed expression, perhaps, but at least he was facing in her direction. "Did you hear me?" 

A faint nod. 

"Good." A pause. "So… you want to start, or should I?" 

**************************

Sitting on the floor was uncomfortable, so they moved to the bed. Or rather, Dylan moved, the Thin Man followed, keeping his fingers firmly planted in her hair. This was going to be difficult, Dylan could tell. "You're going to have to let go to write," she reminded him as she sat in the center of the bed, folding her legs comfortably while he perched on the edge of the mattress. "Unless you want to say it out loud, that is." 

That got his attention. His gaze cleared and for a moment of stunning clarity, she could see everything he was thinking in those frigid blue irises. And strangely enough, it was all one word. 

**_NO._**

"All right then," she said calmly, feeling his fingers tighten in her hair and trying to stave off the inevitable pull. "You want to let go?" 

For a moment, neither of them moved. Then, with a groan akin to real pain, the Thin Man pulled his hand from her hair, lingering for a few seconds to finger the fiery strands before dropping his hand to the bed and holding it rigidly still. Dylan breathed a sigh of relief; no bald spots yet. He was showing tremendous restraint; which made her wonder how big a wad he was going to take when he finally gave in. 

"Do you have any paper?" she asked. 

He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew the familiar small pad and pen. He scribbled something on the top sheet of paper and held it up for her to see. 

_Yes._

Dylan gave him a teasing look. "Yeah, I gathered that," she said, giving him an impish grin. Then, "Did you just make a joke? I didn't think you knew how. I thought it was genetically impossible for you." 

She couldn't be sure, but she thought his eyes sparkled, just for a moment. It was the closest she'd gotten to a laugh from him, and made her smile. 

"All right, first question, and please don't take this the wrong way." She lounged back onto her elbows, looking up at his narrow face and razor sharp cheekbones. "Why the hell aren't you DEAD?" 

He pondered on that one for a long time before finally writing out his answer. _Luck._

"That's putting it mildly, pal. That was an 8-story fall, with a sword sticking through your chest to spice things up. I'd say it was a hell of a lot more than luck." 

He put a checkmark next to _Luck_ and held it up for her again. 

She sighed and shook her head. "Okay, you know what? I don't care. You're alive, that's all that matters at the moment, so we're going to move on. All right?" 

Nod. 

"Good. Next question." She tossed her head, and saw his gaze wander to follow the sinewy wave of her hair. She cleared her throat to regain his attention. "Where did you get the ring? Did you steal it?" 

_Yes._

"Why? HOW? The government doesn't exactly make those things easy to get at. You're good, but I think even YOU'D have trouble getting close enough to their carriers to get that ring. And I think we'd have heard if the head of the US Marshall's turned up dead. Again." 

Another note scribbled on the pad and held up for her inspection. _No one dead_

Dylan frowned. "You mean you didn't kill someone to get that?" 

He circled _No one._

"So how did you GET it?" 

_Stole_

She groaned with frustration and flopped back on the bed, staring at the cottage cheese ceiling. "We're talking in circles," she complained, shifting her gaze so she was looking down her body at him. "You stole it. Okay. Why?" 

_Keep safe_

"It WAS safe. We sort of set that up after you didn't die." 

_No_

"How can you say that? All right, yeah, you managed to get your hands on one, but you're an exception." 

He circled _No_ again. 

Dylan shook her head and sat up again. "It wasn't safe? Why not? Roger Wixon said he was going to have those things under-" 

_Not Roger Wixon_

She stopped talking and blinked at his message. Her gaze shifted from the pad to his face, to the pad, and back again. His face was expressionless, as if he hadn't just given her a blow to the stomach with a heavy-handled mallet. 

"What?" she asked, for lack of anything better to say. "What do you mean, _Not Roger Wixon_?" She thought for a moment as he wrote his answer, then added, "Was he in disguise or something?" 

The Thin Man shook his head as he held up his answer. _Never had them_

Dylan stared at the answer. "Okay, WHAT?" she asked in disbelief, staring at his face. "Look, you're wrong, all right? He had them. We GAVE them to him. I handed them over myself. I was THERE." 

A check mark next to _Never had them_

"Well what the hell DID we give him? Nickel-plated Fruit Loops?" 

_Fakes_

"Excuse me if I find that a LITTLE bit hard to believe. They would have tested them the second they got them back - made sure they were the right ones. They would have told us if they didn't check out." 

_No check_

"Yes check. Checking all over the place. This is the government we're talking about. They double check the sheet count on their toilet paper." 

_No check. Serial number._

Dylan thought that over. "Serial number…," she mused. "You mean… the rings each had a serial number?" Nod. "And THAT was what they used to check if they were real or not?" Another nod. "Why?" 

_Risk_

"Ri- Ohhhhh…" She nodded slowly as his reasoning crystallized for her. "You mean, if they'd physically opened the files on the rings, they'd have been risking someone seeing something they shouldn't. Right? And there was no way they were going to do that, especially not after the things had already been stolen once, by someone on the inside." Her gaze went distant as she thought about it. "Everyone was a suspect…" 

It took her a moment to realize he was holding up his notepad for her again. Focusing on the paper, she read what he had just written. _Someone on the inside._ "Yeah, what about it?" she asked. 

He tapped _Serial number_ with the pen, then pointed back to _Someone on the inside_. 

Dylan's eyes flew open. "Right!" she exclaimed, sitting forward and grabbing the pad away from him to stare at what he'd written. "It had to be someone on the inside. Someone who knew the serial numbers; who could make perfect fakes." She bit her lip, gazing into space as she mulled over the suspects in her head. "That's not a lot of people." 

A few seconds later, she noticed he had his hand out, and realized she hadn't handed him back the notepad. She smiled nervously. "Sorry," she apologized, and handed it back. 

He took it, flipped to a clean page, and wrote, _One person._. 

"Who?" 

He wrote a name. She read it. She blinked, and read it again. 

She looked at him. "You've gotta be kidding me." 

*************************

Natalie and Alex spent the next hour tied and cuffed to chairs in a spotless, empty cargo hold. The place was huge, lit from high above by long tracks of fluorescent bulbs. Their captors had obviously planned on their arrival, and just as with the deck of the ship, anything that could be used as an escape tool had been taken away, leaving the cargo hold eerily abandoned. 

Approximately 20 yards separated Nat and Alex's chairs, which were themselves bolted and soldered to the floor. "You think the Thin Man maybe overdid the accommodations?" Natalie wondered aloud as she struggled against her bonds. The cuffs were just tight enough to make twisting her wrists extremely painful, and the ropes were tied in just such a way that trying to get at the knots was a backbreaking effort. "I mean, we've been held prisoner plenty of times, but this is ridiculous." 

"He's good," Alex agreed, and Natalie could tell from the out of breath quality of her friend's voice that the other woman was trying just as hard as she was to escape. "But anybody who's risen from the dead twice has got to have an edge somewhere." 

"I never imagined him as the crime lord type, though," Natalie mused, idly working her fingers to restore some lost circulation. "He's always been such a loner. I mean, you remember what the Mother Superior said - he's always been painfully shy. With that complexion, who could blame him? Why would he suddenly start seeking out thugs?" 

"Maybe he hit his head in the fall and started to think he was Sonny Corleone." 

Before Natalie could make any kind of comment, a door opened in front of them. _In front_ was, of course, a relative term, since the massive proportions of the cargo hold meant the door was actually a good forty feet away. A shadowy figure stood framed in the dark doorway - tall and lanky - and leaned arrogantly against the doorframe. 

"Hello, ladies," he said, which was only the first of many surprises. 

"He spoke!" Natalie exclaimed, blinking. "The Thin Man never speaks!" 

"That's not the Thin Man, Nat," Alex said, and Nat could hear the almost invisible note of anxiety in her friend's voice. 

Of course it wasn't the Thin Man. Nat knew that. She'd just been expecting him so completely… This was absolutely, 100% unexpected. 

"But… You're DEAD," she stated, dumbfounded. She knew it sounded ridiculous, since he obviously wasn't, but she felt someone ought to say it. 

The figure in the doorway pushed away from the frame and strode into the main body of the cargo hold. Two thugs flanked him from behind. "Life's a funny thing, isn't it?" he said as he stopped, halfway between them and the door. "Then again, so's death. It's amazing how easy it is to fake that kind of thing, when you have enough dirt on the right kind of people. That's how Jimmy Hoffa managed it, you know. Dirt, and plenty of it. See, I know that, because I've read the file." 

Grinning at them, intense blue eyes twinkling, was disgraced US Marshall Raymond Carter, formerly deceased, but currently very much alive. 

"Hey, you two want to play a game?" he asked, as if they were at a dinner party. "It's called _Who's Got the Angel, and Where the Hell's My Other Ring_." He shrugged, and the twinkle in his eyes died as he stared at them. "Not a very catchy name, I guess. So how about this. You've got five minutes to cough up where the redhead is, or one of you gets to see the other's throat slit. Now talk." 

For the first time in their working history, both women were absolutely speechless. And the clock was ticking. 

  
_TBC…_

  
**Author's Notes:** Hi again, everyone! I hope the ending of this chapter was a bit of a surprise for all you intrepid CA readers out there. ;) I originally went to see "Full Throttle" for Robert Patrick, who is (and has always been) one of my premiere obsessions. LOL! The addition of Crispin was an unexpected bonus! I just had to resurrect the dastardly Ray Carter, so I could have free reign to play around with him. *cackle/cough* Read that anyway you wish; I won't mind. ;) LOL! 

Thank you all for sticking with the story this far! I hope this chapter (despite being wordy as all get out) was enjoyable for you! And here's hoping I can get chapter 4 up lickity-split. :-D Please review! 


	4. A Little Thing Called Leverage

**TITLE:** Where's Your H.A.L.O.?  
_Chapter 4: A Little Thing Called Leverage_  
**AUTHOR:** Mnemosyne  


For Disclaimer and other notes, see chapter one 

  


* * *

  
Dylan couldn't sit still. Her mind was reeling from the Thin Man's revelation, and her body felt the need to follow suit. It would have been wonderfully soothing to twirl in place like a maniac, but the practical side of her nature told her that making herself dizzy and sick was a recipe for disaster, so she'd have to leave the Dervish impersonation for later. 

"Ray Carter," she muttered, staring distractedly at her feet as she paced back and forth across the room. "Ray Carter! I mean… Ray Carter!" She stopped and looked at the Thin Man, who was calmly watching her fitful wanderings as if he'd been expecting this reaction and was completely unfazed. For some reason, that annoyed the hell out of her; it was as if she had no secrets around this man. When did HE get the monopoly on mystery? 

"Let me get this straight," she said, crossing her arms and turning to face him head on. "Ray Carter, former chief of the US Marshalls, is NOT actually dead, like everyone believed. Instead, he's holed up somewhere with one half of the two holy frigging H.A.L.O. rings, and is searching hell bent for leather for the other one. Am I close?" 

A nod. 

"Great. Just great." She threw her hands in the air in a gesture of frustration. "Doesn't anyone stay dead anymore!" Stabbing an accusatory finger in his direction, she demanded, "Tell me Seamus O'Grady is dead. PROMISE me he's dead." 

Another nod. 

"Madison Lee?" 

Nod. 

"Eric Knox? Vivian Wood?" 

He gave her a bored look. 

"Hey, this might be old news to you, bucko, but to me it's the stuff headlines are made of." She crossed her arms and began pacing again. "Well at least we only have one greedy, power hungry psycho to take down this time. Thank heavens for small favors." 

A moment later, a wad of paper hit her on the side of the head. 

"Hey!" she exclaimed, miffed, stopping her pacing and glaring at him. "What do you think this is, fourth grade homeroom?" 

He gestured to the ball of paper on the floor, and Dylan crouched down to pick it up. Smoothing it out, she read _Thugs_. 

"Okay, so we've got one greedy, power hungry psycho and a load of his henchmen to take down," she amended. "Fine. We can do that." She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Yeah, with an army and a vat of teargas." Crossing her arms over her knees, she looked the Thin Man in the eye. "I need Nat and Alex," she told him plainly. "I can't do this alone." 

The look he gave her was half indignant, half hurt as he shook his head firmly. Then, almost as an afterthought, he pressed a hand to his chest, his gesture plainly saying _Me._

Dylan winced. "Sorry," she apologized, standing up and moving to the bed. Sitting on the edge beside him, she admitted, "I kind of keep forgetting you're on my side here." Hesitating just a moment, she covered his hand with her own. "Thanks." 

He looked at her, blue eyes indescribable. Dylan felt the urge to run her fingers through the impeccably coiffed black slick of his hair, mussed only slightly by their earlier tussle on the floor. It curled around his face now, rather than staying plastered firmly back behind his ears, but she liked the effect. It made him look more human, and helped her justify the tingles he elicited in her stomach. 

"Anthony," she said softly, using his adoptive name for lack of anything else, "Where did you get the ring?" 

His eyes moved away from her face and he stood up, whip thin body moving like a knife blade. Dylan watched him go. "You can't keep hiding it," she told him. "You're going to have to tell me sooner or later, or I'll find out on my own. I don't think you want that." 

His back was to her, but she could tell from the tension in his shoulders that he didn't like his options. "I know you stole it from Carter," she prompted, watching him carefully. "But I have to ask - how did you know Carter had them?" She paused only a moment before continuing, "How did you know any of it, Anthony? About Madison, about Max being Leo, about the Coal Bowl. All of it. It took Nat, Alex and I ages to deduce any of that, but you knew before us. You knew it all. HOW?" 

There was no movement from his tall, lanky body for a long time. When he finally did shift, it was to scribble something on his pad of paper before turning around and extending the note towards her. Dylan took it. 

_Not Anthony._

Her eyes snapped upwards. This wasn't what she'd been expecting. "What should I call you, then?" she asked, trying not to sound too sarcastic. "Slim?" 

He took the pad, wrote something else, and handed it back to her. Again, she read the spidery writing. 

_Lucian_

She read the name several times, trying to get a feel for it. Somehow it suited him. There was something about the sound, the syllables, the way it rolled off her tongue, that fit his angular features. Perhaps it was because it sounded so close to _Lucifer_. 

Abandoning that train of thought as cynical, she slowly raised her eyes from the pad and found herself pinned under his intense gaze. His eyes were blazing, the way a fire burns hottest where the flame turns white. Dylan had the feeling he had never shared this secret with anyone before; that he had given her something very important with that slip of paper, and that he would have no qualms killing her - infatuation or not - if she so much as breathed wrong in the next few seconds. 

She took a deep, slow breath, and calmly tore the note to shreds. 

"The nuns were right, then," she said quietly, eyes never leaving his face. "You're Romanian." He made no indication of ascent or disagreement as he watched her sift the homemade confetti from one hand to the other and scrunch it into a ball. "Okay, Lucian," she continued, reaching out to open the nightstand's drawer and drop the scraps of paper inside, "what were you doing that got you involved in this whole mess?" She held out the pad for him with one hand and closed the drawer with the other. 

He took the proffered notebook, wrote a short message, and handed it back. The note was brief - only two words - but it chilled Dylan in a way she couldn't explain. 

This was the message. 

_My job_

*********************

"Tick, tock, ladies. The mouse has run up the clock and back down again and found himself a timeshare in the Hamptons. Anyone feel like talking now?" 

Alex had trained herself at an early age how NOT to sweat. Like everything in her young life, she had taken the adage _Never let 'em see you sweat_ to heart, and had forced her body to take it just as seriously. The trick, she'd found, lay in making your body believe you were always in a nicely air-conditioned room, drinking a chocolate milk shake. In later years, the milk shake had been replaced with a strawberry daiquiri, but the principle remained the same. _Never let 'em see you sweat_ meant never giving them any sweat to see. 

Sitting here, in this empty room, chained like an animal and looking down the shiny edge of a 4 inch straight razor, it was all she could do to keep that strawberry daiquiri from shattering in her hand, taking her self-imposed cool with it. 

"Look, we don't know what you're talking about, okay?" she heard Natalie saying, in some faraway, distant land. The tone of the other woman's voice told Alex that the blonde was trying to hide her fear behind false bravado. "What do you WANT? And why do you want Dylan?" 

Good. Try to get some information out of him. At least one of them was thinking. Alex had never liked razors, and having one this close to her face was unnerving. 

"Natalie, Natalie, Natalie," Carter chided, as if talking to a small child. He was alone with them, presumably having left Bruiser and Brit Boy - his two resident thugs - outside, which meant he was either extremely confident or plain stupid. Alex couldn't move her hands, and she'd lost feeling in her feet where her bindings held her immobile. She was inclined to believe the former. 

Carter waggled the razor beside Alex's cheek, and the dark-eyed Angel forced herself not to close her eyes. "Do I look like Boris Badanov to you? I'm not going to give away my plan, so you can attempt a daring escape in full possession of all my secrets." He laughed a little. "See how I said _attempt_ an escape? Because you wouldn't get ten feet before I shot you. It's that simple. And if you don't want Ms. Munday here to learn what it's like to be a Thanksgiving turkey, you'll start talking." The razor started to swoop in. 

Alex cringed, and heard Natalie exclaim, "Wait!" 

The razor froze, half an inch from her eye. "Yes?" Carter said. "You have something you wanted to say?" 

"We don't know where she is," Alex managed to say, forcing her eyes to open fully so she could glare up at the man in front of her. 

Carter's eyes were two blue suns in his tanned, unusually handsome face. "Sorry if I find that a little hard to believe," he shot back sarcastically. "You three are so attuned to each other, you might as well be surgically attached at the hip." 

"She's telling the truth," Natalie verified, in earnest. "She disappeared, sometime between last night and this morning." 

The former US Marshall looked back and forth between them, as if trying to gauge their honesty. Alex had managed to recover her cool by now, and refused to give him anything more than cold animosity. 

"Okay," he said after a moment. "Let's say I believe you. That leaves us with a bit of a situation, doesn't it? Namely, what do I do with two meddling women who can't seem to keep their pretty noses out of my business?" 

"Don't play dumb with us," Alex spat at him, eyes hard. She didn't enjoy threats anymore than she enjoyed people shooting at her. "You WANTED to be found. The beach, the car. You used to be government - you know how to blend in, and you were purposely doing just the opposite. I think you know EXACTLY what you're going to do with us. I think you've known all along." 

Carter looked at her for a moment, then grinned. If he'd been one of the good guys, she might have fallen for him with a smile like that. But she wasn't Dylan, and a toothy grin wasn't going to set her knees knocking; not when it was coming from a man whose right hand was still fiddling with a gold-plated straight razor. "Very good, Ms. Munday," he congratulated her, though the praise fell on cold ears. "You know, I had a feeling that maybe Dylan didn't have anything to do with my little robbery. That she was just an innocent bystander, caught up in the fray. After all, from what I know of you Angels, you do everything as a unit, and Ms. Sanders went rogue once already. I doubt she's itching to do it again." He reached two long fingers into the breast pocket of his casual dress shirt... 

…and withdrew an unmistakable lock of silky, auburn hair. 

"But with evidence like this, I couldn't in good conscience not even ASK," he said, fingering the strands idly. "I'm inclined to believe you two. You're good, honest people. You believe in right and wrong. You pay your taxes; I know because I checked your files before my tragic death. So I don't think you'd lie to me about this. For that, thank you, because you've answered my second question." 

"Which was?" Alex asked coldly. 

"If not Dylan, then who?" He arched an eyebrow. "And I don't think you need me to answer that for you. You're smart ladies. I found this near the safe where I kept the A-half of the rings. If it wasn't ripped out of Ms. Sander's skull in her rush to get the hell out of Dodge before I found her, then it got dropped by someone in a hurry. We almost had her last night, and then she would have had plenty of chances to explain everything and plead her innocence before we killed her. But someone got to her first. So I ask you." He looked purposefully from one to the other. "Who do you know that has an obsession with hair? Especially," he held up the lock again, "this hair." 

Alex had the urge to share a look with Natalie, but fought it down. 

"So you're right, Alex," Carter continued, absently flipping the razor open and closed. "I do know what I'm going to do with you. I'm going to keep you right here, locked up nice and tight, until your little friend comes looking for you. And where she goes, that skinny son-of-a-bitch will follow, and then I'll really have the bull by the horns. I'll shake him till he coughs up my ring, then I'll show him what happens to men who double-cross Ray Carter." He snapped the razor shut with a terminal CLICK. 

Alex arched an eyebrow. "You're a real prince, Carter," she said acidly. 

He gave her an icy smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I'm a businessman, Ms. Munday," he answered. "That's something Madison never understood. She thought I was a greedy G-man with connections, and she was the brains of the operation. But all she was was a distraction - a shell game so I could get the rings." He laughed a little and rubbed his eyebrow with his thumb. "I think she thought she was the only one who didn't work well with partners." He shrugged. "Her loss, my gain." 

"You suck," Natalie shot. 

"Sticks and stones, Natalie," he chided. "Now if you two don't mind, I have a brutal dual murder and subsequent cover-up to plan. Then I have to decide what I'm going to do to our thin friend and his lady fair. Get some rest. You'll need it." With one last smile, he turned on his heel and headed for the door, leaving them in the darkness with the knowledge of just _whose_ murders he was planning to keep them very much awake. 

**********************

Dylan listened - or rather, read - Lucian's story with the cold, dispassionate attention she would have paid beige paint swatches. She had to, or else risk losing what was left of her mind. It all fit together so perfectly, but was no less shocking for it's inevitability. 

After surviving the explosion at Knox's castle, the Thin Man had taken a few months to heal, then had gone looking for work again. An assassin of his caliber was always in high demand, and it wasn't long before he had found himself a steady stream of business. One thing led to another, and he soon came into the employ of Ray Carter. 

"The H.A.L.O. operation," Dylan observed flatly at this point in his narrative. 

The Thin Man said nothing, but handed her the next page of the story, written in his painfully cramped script. 

His silence, he claimed, made people trust him more than they would other assassins. Carter was no different. Before long, the corrupt US Marshall had explained his entire plan: the rings, their importance, and the integral participation of Madison Lee. Madison would work as the go between - she would be the front of the operation; the one who would actually "steal" the rings, which would then be "returned" to the government when she was defeated. 

That defeat was Lucian's primary task. 

"So that's how you knew about everything before we did," Dylan observed quietly, watching his face with distant eyes. "Carter told you." 

Lucian nodded, and handed her the next page. 

He had been charged with damaging Madison's plan at every turn. At the Coal Bowl, he had killed Emmers. He had deliberately allowed the Angel's to follow his tracks to the orphanage, and subsequently to Seamus' ship, which had then set up Carter's retrieval of the rings. 

"Carter knew that Madison had been an Angel," Dylan mused, "and he knew only the Angels could defeat her." She looked at him, this time with clear eyes. "But he couldn't trust that we would stop her completely - he had to have a backup plan. So he had you sabotaging the operation from the inside, to degrade her in the eyes of her clientele. Piss off the O'Grady's, or the Yakuza, or the Mafia, and you're in trouble. That's what you were doing, right? Pissing them off on her behalf." 

_Yes_

"That was a dangerous game," she said softly. "If Madison had found out…" 

A quick scribble. _No one finds out_

That made her shiver. She took the next page as he handed it to her, and continued to read. 

Carter had deliberately led the Angels to the observatory, for a dual purpose: to have witnesses to his "death," and to reveal Madison as the "evil mastermind." With him removed from the picture, he was free to steal back the rings. 

"Hold on," Dylan said, physically holding up a hand and squinting at him. "He stole them BACK?" 

A nod. 

"How! I doubt Madison let those rings out of her sight!" 

_Me_

Dylan cocked her head to the side, assessing him silently. She tried to imagine him sneaking into Madison's boudoir as she showered, fingering through her unmentionables until he found the rings hidden in a secret compartment in her underwear drawer. It must have been something like that - Madison would never have let him have the rings if she'd been wearing them. 

Dylan felt a stab of useless jealousy, but fought it down. 

"All right, I think I get the rest of this now," she said, holding up a hand to refuse the next page of the story. "You took the REAL rings and replaced them with Carter's fakes. You took the originals back to Carter, and when we defeated Madison, we got the fakes." She shook her head. "But there's still something I don't get. A few things, actually. One," she held up an index finger, "WHY did you give the rings to Carter, if you were just going to steal them back later?" 

He hesitated a split second before writing his response. _Later_

"No, not later. I want to know now." 

An emphatic line added. _Later_

Dylan sighed in frustration but let it pass. "Fine. Later." She pointed at him with an accusing finger. "But that later WILL happen." 

He nodded, then gave her an expectant look, waiting for her second question. 

Dylan sighed. "Why did you come back?" she asked softly, watching his face closely for a reaction. "You didn't have to. Your job was over." 

The look he gave her was searing, as if he were reading her mind; or more so, as if he were trying to make her read his. It didn't take much - his thoughts were written all over his face. 

"It was me, wasn't it," she murmured, making it a statement rather than a question. "You came back because of me." 

No response, but she knew she was right. 

"Lucian," she breathed in frustration, reaching out to touch his cheek. He recoiled for a moment, then leaned into her hand, pale eyes closing in rapture. Dylan didn't bother to hide her confusion as she ran a thumb over his cheekbone. "Why me?" she whispered. "Why bother with ME? What did I ever do to … imprint on you like this? Natalie's more beautiful, and more cheerful. Alex is … well, more beautiful, too, and a hell of a lot richer. I'm just Dylan - all I do is wear wigs and hit things. I'm good at both, but they're nothing to crow about." 

His eyes opened again, and he gazed at her silently. Then, slowly, he pulled away from her hand, picked up the pad, and wrote, _Lonely_. 

"Lonely?" she snorted, letting her hand drop into her lap. "I'm not lonely. I've got Nat and Alex and Charlie and Bos. I've got plenty of people around me all the time. I'm good." 

He ignored her, and scribbled a short diagram on the back of his last note:  
_Natalie = Peter  
Alex = Jason Gibbs  
Bosley = Family  
Charlie = Daughters_  


Dylan read this, and frowned. "Charlie has daughters?" 

The Thin Man grabbed the diagram back, scribbled out _Daughters_ and wrote in _Angels_. 

"Oh," Dylan murmured, reading the revised note. After a moment she shook her head, "No, you're forgetting that the Angels and I are sisters." She smiled at him. "As close as, at least. They're my family." 

_Then why did you leave_

Her throat went dry. "How did you know about that?" she asked, though the answer was obvious - Carter had told him. 

He ignored the question, and pointed at the question again. 

"Because I… didn't want them to get hurt," she explained. "No one wants their family or friends to get hurt because of some stupid mistake they made. I dated Seamus - that was MY problem, not theirs. Their lives didn't deserve to be put in danger because of a dumb move I made when I was a kid. Any sister would have done the same." She looked at him, seeking his approval for her excuse. 

He wasn't giving it. _Break ties, no connections_

"Yeah, well I've been in the WPP long enough, I'm a dab hand at that." 

_Lonely_

"Stop saying that, all right?" She knew how odd that sounded, talking to a mute as she was, but she didn't care. "And what does any of this have to do with my question, anyway? Why did you pick ME?" 

He studied her for a minute, then picked up her hand. She watched as he quietly spelled out letters on her palm with his fingertip. 

_L-O-N-E-L-Y 2_

For some reason, that choked her up, and she found herself staring at his thin, pale face and trying to find the frightened boy who lurked there beneath the surface. The one who had found himself on the doorstep of a catholic orphanage after the tragic death of his family. The one who had chosen, at such a young age, to live apart from everyone else; to seclude himself from all manner of society in every way possible, even removing his own voice. She wondered if she would have done the same thing in his situation. It came as only a small surprise to her when she discovered that yes, she probably would have. Not because she was afraid, but because she was stubborn; stubborn as a mule, and twice as ornery. If she didn't want to talk, no one was going to make her talk. And if that self-imposed ban lasted twenty years, then so be it, because she was the boss of herself. They could plead, wheedle, and cajole, but nothing they could say would convince her. NO ONE was going to tell her what to do. 

Then after a while, people would stop trying. Then, after a longer while, they wouldn't even know they were supposed to. 

"What were you trying to say to me?" she murmured, voice trembling slightly. "On the roof, when we were fighting Madison and Seamus. You tried to say something, after we… After we kissed." She wanted to curl her fingers around his hand and squeeze, but resisted the urge, leaving her canvas free for him to write. "What was it?" 

He took so long to answer, she wondered if he had heard her question at all, or if he'd been in a zone all his own. She was about to ask a second time when his fingertip began to move on her palm again, spelling a new word. She bit her tongue and paid attention to the swirls against her skin, trying to make out each letter in turn. 

_**W  
O  
W**_

It took a few seconds for that to sink in. When it did, Dylan found a sneaky smile creeping onto her face. "Liar," she chuckled quietly, looking at him through her lashes. "You didn't start to break a twenty some-odd year vow of silence just to say _Wow_." 

His eyes nearly twinkled, and she knew he was glad to have made her laugh. 

For a moment, Dylan was struck by the oddity of this situation. She was sitting in the dark with a murderer, soaking in his secrets like a sponge, while he pried open all the doors she'd ever locked around herself and peered inside. It was a crazy, creepy feeling; a bit like staring into the abyss and finding that the abyss wasn't deepest black at all, but was actually a pair of milky blue eyes with pinprick pupils, topped by rapier thin eyebrows. She saw things in this man that scared her, because they reminded her so much of herself: a gravity towards danger, a life of seclusion, and now, a bone-aching loneliness she hadn't even allowed herself to acknowledge until tonight. Because he was right - she WAS lonely. Through her teen years, Helen Zaas had been a social creature, perhaps running with the wrong crowd, but at least it WAS a crowd. After sending Seamus to jail, the Dylan Sanders that emerged had been stronger, bolder, even more stubborn, and absolutely determined that she would never, ever let anyone get close enough to hurt her again. Discovering Seamus' true colors had felt like riding a racehorse that came to a sudden, jarring halt, throwing her from the saddle and pitching her forward, between its ears, to land winded and wounded on the hard-packed turf. A rude awakening at best, a blood-deep betrayal at worst, and Dylan never did anything by half-measures. 

"You scare me," she murmured, not realizing she'd said it out loud until the words were past her lips, "but not because you can kill me, and I know you can. You scare me because I could have been you, and because part of me still wants to be you, and another part of me wants to hear how _you_ became you, and another part of me is convinced none of that matters because you're who you are, I'm who I am, and somehow we work." She swallowed, folded her fingers around his hand, and refused to look away from his eyes. "You scare me because you KNOW. No one knows." She could feel a hot lump in her throat and forced herself to swallow around it, ignoring the tears that were searing behind her eyelids, begging to be released. 

"I'm sorry," she whispered, as if that could make up for everything: his parents dying, his life of crime, her life of justice, and the seemingly unbridgeable gap that stood between them, even though mere inches separated them on the bed. "I'm just sorry." 

This time she DID look away; it hurt too much to look at his eyes, knowing the pain she'd find there. Instead, she looked down at their entwined hands, and wondered what it would have been like if she'd met him instead of Seamus all those years earlier. Maybe she could have changed him for the better; maybe he'd have changed her for the worse. Either way, she couldn't imagine them blasting down the Strip listening to Bon Jovi. Instead, she saw quiet, sultry nights spent in silk-draped, windowless basement apartments, lit by candlelight, making love to the strains of Beethoven's _Für Elise_ like vampires. Maybe she could have gotten him to say her name. Maybe he would have taught her how to fence. Maybe they'd both have died young and immature and violently in love. 

That was how Helen Zaas would have done it. Dylan Sanders was just tired. 

The hand under her chin was soft but persistent, and when she finally looked up, she only had a moment to register his face moving in before his lips were firmly pressed against hers and his hand had slipped around to cradle the back of her neck like fragile china. She stiffened, surprised, then let her eyes slide shut and moaned, leaning into the kiss. This wasn't like the exchange on the roof of the Los Angeles Theater - there was no fatalistic urgency, no fear. Lucian's hand tightened on the back of her neck, holding her still as his mouth worked over hers like waves over beaches. Dylan took the onslaught and gave it back, twining her hands in the lapels of his suit and pulling hard enough to strain the intricate tailoring to the breaking point. 

Their instincts had kicked in, and the predators were fighting in grand style to see which would become the prey. Dylan had never been a demure bedmate - she knew what she wanted, and she got it everytime. But there was something in the way his fingers curled in the hair at the nape of her neck, how his other hand shook loose of her grip and snaked around her waist, pulling her closer in a vicelike grip, that excited her. He held her like nothing else existed, and she was the only necessary thing for his survival 

Little by little, she loosened her grip on his lapels. Little by little, she played to lose. 

Then, there was a cough. 

The moment shattered like a fallen chandelier. Dylan leapt away from the Thin Man, who in turn nearly jumped out of his skin as he flew to his feet, a murderous gleam in his eye. 

"Sorry to interrupt," the masculine figure leaning casually in the doorway said, a laugh evident in his voice, "but we've got a few pressing matters to attend to, mate, and I thought you'd like to know about them." 

He stepped into the room, a tall, strikingly attractive man with dark blonde hair and brown eyes, and the kind of muscular physique you saw on soccer players. He also had what Natalie would have referred to as a "swoony" British accent. 

And a very large 9MM tucked into his belt. 

"Who are you?" Dylan asked through gritted teeth, her embarrassment forgotten as she slowly got to her feet and took up a defensive position next to the Thin Man, who was not taking his eyes off the stranger. 

"What, you mean Anthony hasn't told you all about me?" the man asked with mock hurt. "Pull the other one, 'Tone. And here I thought we were partners in this sordid little affair." 

Dylan gave the Thin Man a disbelieving look. "You know this guy?" 

Lucian still hadn't moved a muscle, but she saw his jaw twitch faintly. 

"He sure does, ducky," the man said with a smile, and held out a hand towards her. "Names Rodger Makum, but you can call me Dodger. Most folks do." 

"As in Artful?" Dylan asked sarcastically, ignoring his hand. 

"Can't beat the classics," Dodger admitted, tucking his hand amiably away in his bomber jacket pocket. "So Anthony hasn't told you about me?" 

"He's a bit tight-lipped, yeah." 

"Always has been, the old sod. I guess I understand it though, seeing the business we're in and all." 

"And what...business is that?" 

"What, you don't know?" He jerked his thumb in Lucian's direction. "I do what he does, only better." He gave her a dazzling grin. "Just came from HQ, actually, and I thought you might like to know that Carter's got your two lovely friends locked up in a godawful cargo hold down at the docks, chicky. You might want to be getting them out of there, 'fore he starts getting happy with that razor of his." 

"WHAT!" Dylan exclaimed, staring at him in stunned amazement. 

"Oh, it's the oldest trick in the book, luv," Dodger continued, seemingly unfazed by her reaction. "He wants you, and he wants him," the Englishman nodded to Lucian, "so he took something that means a little something to you, and now he's just waiting for you to come collect. It's a little thing called leverage. I'd've thought you'd've heard of it, being who and what you are and all." 

Dylan could only gape, for once stripped of anything to say. The Thin Man, strangely enough, did all the talking. He grabbed up his cane, which was leaning against the nightstand, slid the hidden blade from its narrow sheath, and proceeded to slice the nearest pillow to pieces with a furious howl. 

"Yeah, I thought you'd say that," Dodger said with a nod. After a moment of watching feathers fly around like confetti, he added, "Kind of feel sorry for the goose." 

Dylan could only blink and watch the Thin Man's rampage with a faraway gaze. //Oh God,// she thought, swallowing. //Not again.// 

And this time, she couldn't even run for Mexico. 

  
  
_TBC..._

  
**Author's Notes:** Hello again, all! Thanks for sticking with the story! I promise, more action in the next chapter. ;) LOL! _Dearne_, good call on the British guy. ;) To everyone, I hope this chapter kept you interested, and that you'll be back for chapter 5! Thanks so much for reading! 


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